The hidden tentacles of the world's most secret body.

By Geoffrey Lean,,18 July 1999

From the Independent on Sunday - 18 July 1999 by Geoffrey Lean, the leading UK environmental correspondent.

THE HIDDEN TENTACLES OF THE WORLD'S MOST SECRET BODY.

Behind the imposing entrance of a grand 1920s building right on the shores of Lake Geneva lies what is probably the most powerful organisation on Earth. Far more potent than any Government, it's decisions are already affecting our lives and unleashing international conflicts.

It can stop us choosing what we eat. It can strike down laws passed by even the strongest, democratic governments. It can start or sanction trade wars. And it can set at naught the provisions of international treaties which have been solemnly ratified by the world's nations.

It's not NATO, despite its victory in Kosovo. It's certainly not the weak and underfunded United Nations. It's not even the IMF, although it directs the economies of scores of countries. No, the building on the lakeside - set in fine gardens with a magnificent view of Mont Blanc - belongs to a much less well-known but much more powerful body, the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

This organisation, which sets the rules which govern how nations trade with each other, is about to become the centre of a gigantic battle for public opinion. This (northern hemisphere) autumn it will begin a push, backed by the many of the world's richest nations, to extend its powers even more. And some 700 organisations from 73 countries have already sworn to stop it.

Ranging from big outfits like Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and the Japanese Consumers Union to small grassroots networks in the Third World, they have signed a joint declaration to "oppose any effort to expand the powers of the World Trade Organisation.", saying that it has worked "to prise open markets for the benefit of transnational corporations at the expense of national economies, workers, farmers and other people".

Already the temperature is rising. Last week, the WTO ruled that the EU must drop an 11 year ban - imposed to safeguard health - on US beef treated with hormones. It authorised the Clinton Administration to penalise European goods until it does (see box).

The row will come to a head on 29 November, when world trade ministers meet in Seattle. The EU, despite its experience last week, will be pressing for a new round of negotiations - called the Millennium Round - to give the WTO power over even more areas of world trade. It will be backed by Japan, Canada and, to a lesser extent, the US. The grassroots campaigners and some Third World governments - including India, Egypt, Malaysia and a coalition of African countries - will resist.

It was never supposed to be like this. The WTO is the inheritor of a fifty year push to promote free trade - a cause once as uncontroversial as freedom itself - to prevent a repeat of the unhappy era of beggar-your-neighbour protectionism between the wars. In eight rounds of talks since 1947, its predecessor - the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) - gradually opened world markets. The Uruguay Round, completed in 1994, set up the WTO. It was charged with monitoring and enforcing the new rules and given unprecedented powers to make legally binding rulings on trade disputes between countries, and authorise retaliatory, punitive trade sanctions.

The way it has used these powers is leading to a growing suspicion that its initials should really stand for World Take Over. In a series of rulings it has struck down measures to help the world's poor, protect the environment, and safeguard health in the interests of private - usually American - companies.

"The WTO seems to on a crusade to increase private profit at the expense of all other considerations, including the well-being and quality of life of the mass of the world's people," says Ronnie Hall, Trade Campaigner at Friends of the Earth International. "It seems to have a relentless drive to extend its power."

Environmentalists and health campaigners fear that after slapping down such diverse "impediments to free trade" as small Caribbean banana farmers, clean petrol, endangered turtles, and health precautions (see boxes) it will now help the US Government, Monsanto and other biotech companies make it impossible for people to refuse to eat genetically modified food.

The United States and Canada have already officially complained to the WTO about the increasing measures in Britain and other European countries to label GM products. Even though these are only being brought in after much public disquiet and enshrine the principle of consumer choice, they may fall foul of the trade rules.

If they do, European governments will have to scrap the labels or face massive retaliatory action on wholly unconnected industries (targets for sanctions so far include jam and tea-makers, bed linen and handbags, cheese and motorcycles).

Enter a little known, but immensely powerful body, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a living embodiment of the effectiveness of the bureaucratic dodge of disguising the importance of an institution by giving it an obscure name.

Run by two United Nations bodies, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health Organisation, it is supposed to be used by governments to set food standards. In practice its assemblies and decision-making committees are packed with representatives of the food industry, who meet in secret to set rules to govern their own conduct. They are, unsurprisingly therefore, not very demanding.

The WTO makes the world observe these standards and no other. A democratically elected Government cannot choose to set tougher ones to protect its people. If it tries, the WTO can rule the measures illegal and hit the country with punitive sanctions.

Environmentalists also fear that the WTO will outlaw voluntary labelling, like the successful schemes to identify wood produced by ecologically friendly forestry. A Dutch timber labelling scheme has already been scrapped after a threat to take it to the WTO. Another target may be the increasingly popular "fair trade" initiatives, which identify tea, coffee and other products produced in ways that benefit the world's poor.

All this, protests the WTO, is in the interests of "deregulation." But it is also forcing developing countries to introduce rules which could enable multinationals to patent foods and natural medicines that their people have used for centuries: one US company has "patented" basmati rice. Poor people may thus be forced to pay for products they have traditionally used..

The WTO and its supporters - the trade ministers of the wealthiest countries - insist that this liberalisation will benefit the poor. It is not working out like that. Under the trade rules, for example, the Philippines is importing American corn that is far cheaper than its local equivalent. As a result, says Oxfam, half a million poor Filipino farmers risk losing their livelihoods. And, it adds, the subsidy to each American farmer, at $29,000 (=A317,000) a year, is 100 times higher than the Filipino growers' entire average income.

Aren't such subsidies an impediment to free trade? The WTO seems to have a selective view. While Third World countries are forbidden to subsidise their crops, Western nations quintupled their agricultural subsidies from $47 billion to $247 billion in the first four years of the WTOs existence.

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